Nanking: The Schindler’s List of Asia?
The Washington Post has a new article out about Ted Leonisis, who bankrolled NANKING, the new documentary based on Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking, which recently began airing at the Sundance Film Festival:
The film, a spare, sober recounting of the rapes and murders of 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers in the city of Nanking in 1937 and ’38, cost Leonsis $2 million to make. The movie’s somber heroes are a collection of Westerners, and one Nazi businessman, who stayed behind and constructed a safe zone in the city that saved the lives of 200,000 Chinese. Such actors as Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway help narrate the story, playing some of those involved. The family of one of the real-life heroes, American physician Robert Wilson, attended the premiere and thanked Leonsis and his staff during a question-and-answer session after the movie.
Leonsis, who owns the Washington Capitals hockey team, is meeting this week in Utah with distributors in hopes of getting the film released to movie theaters and television; he’s already struck one deal for the international release rights.
And now that he’s made one film, Leonsis thinks he’s latched onto a Big Idea: He fancies using a “filmanthropy” model to make future projects with a social bent.
[...]
As exhilarating as the night was, Leonsis, ever the salesman, didn’t forget why he was at Sundance: to pitch his film. And he wasn’t shy about describing his movie.
“It’s a tough, important movie to watch,” Leonsis said. “But it’s uplifting stuff. This is ‘Schindler’s List’ with a Chinese twist. This movie, if marketed right, could be like a ‘Passion of the Christ,’ ” he said, referring to the surprise blockbuster of 2004.
The “Schindler’s List” analogy also appears at the beginning of this Sundance interview with the directors of the documentary:
At this point it is unclear how much of the film agrees with Iris Chang’s conclusions on the Nanking Incident. The Washington Post article would have us believe that the film endorses the official Chinese death toll of 300,000, a figure that is widely disputed by scholars [especially in Japan]. Meanwhile, the film’s official site quotes the Tokyo Trial’s official figure of 200,000 killed. Strangely enough, the writer/directors state in the above video that three-quarters of one million people of Nanking fled the city before the Japanese came, while the official site of the film puts the number of civilians given refuge by the Schindler-esque foreigners at about 200,000. When you put all these statements together, the position of the film makers regarding the politically sensitive bodycount issue is a bit hazy. I guess we’ll have to wait until the film’s wider release to know exactly where it will stand on the major issues of contention.
A side note: Frankly, I’m a bit turned-off by the constant mention of “Schindler’s List” in connection with this film. Such statements make the creators look like they are trying to shamelessly whore this historical tragedy for all its worth, but I guess that’s just the way industry insiders talk when they are trying to sell a film about war crimes?
[Thanks to Fan Zhang for the video link!]
